Citrix Ups Tags
Citrix has quietly increased prices on its virtualization gear by 10% everywhere in the world but the US where the market is fragile

Yahoo’s Lifeblood Flowing Away
The beginning of the week Yahoo was trading around $18.75, below the $19.18 it was at on January 31 right before Microsoft entered the scene with its $31-a-share bid. The pundits said that was a five-year low. On Thursday, a really lousy day generally, it dipped to $17.80.

Sony Recalls Laptops
Sony is recalling 438,000 Vaio laptops for fear some errant wires will cause a short and set the things on fire. The problem affects the VGN-TZ100, 200, 300 and 2000, some 72,800 of which are in the US. It’s unclear what the promised repairs will cost. A couple of years ago Dell, Apple, Lenovo, Toshiba and other OEMs had to recall over eight million Sony laptop batteries.

Egenera To ‘PAN’ VMware
Egenera is about to preview a new joint capacity-on-demand solution that’s supposed to provide VMware VirtualCenter users with direct access to Egenera’s PAN Manager processing widgetry.

With capacity-on-demand, users can automatically deploy ESX hosts onto bare metal, an answer to the so-called over-utilization that can adversely affect virtual machine performance.

New ESX hosts should be able to automatically register to VirtualCenter as part of the resource pool, while underutilized ESX hosts can be automatically powered off to reduce energy consumption.

And VMware features like Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS) and High Availability (HA) will rebalance virtual machine workloads within the changed environment.

Do Regulators Matter in the Google-Yahoo Deal?
While at the Democratic National Convention last week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, a Barack Obama technology advisor, told Bloomberg Television that Google’s deal with Yahoo will start in October, suggesting it didn’t much matter what regulators in the US and now Canada may have to say. Eric’s old boss Scott McNealy is advising John McCain.

Oracle Finally Names a CFO
Oracle has named Jeff Epstein CFO, replacing Safra Catz who remains co-president. Epstein has been CFO of Oberon Media, a games house, since March of last year and used to work at DoubleClick. Catz had to take over the CFO job at Oracle in November of 2005 when ex-Microsoft executive Greg Maffei suddenly bolted after being at Oracle for less than five months. Oracle has reportedly had trouble filing the job because it reports to Catz, suggesting she really runs Oracle day-to-day.

Observation Towers Are Trained on Apple
According to a “Let’s Rock” invitation Apple e-mailed to the press, a pre-holiday product announcement of some kind or another is set for Tuesday, September 9. Best guess is it’s iPod-related and not a new Mac laptop, but you never know. iPod sales have leveled off if not stalled and there’s been talk of Apple doing an iTunes cloud subscription service – unless Dell does it first when it finally tries to move into the space. Eyes will be on Steve Jobs’ physical condition, especially since Bloomberg recently reminded everybody of his frail appearance by accidentally publishing his obituary.

VMware Pays Off Greene
VMware is paying ex-CEO Diane Greene to go away. There was no provision in her contract for a mid-year bonus or a pro rata payout, but the company is going to write her a check for $400,000 anyway to settle all claims. That’s on top of her salary and stock options.

VIA Wins Chinese Nettop Account
VIA has gotten a nettop design-win from Beijing-based PC OEM Tsinghua TongFang for its 1.6GHz C7-M processor and VX700 chipset. The 10.2-inch S1 imini MiniNote Series includes a business card manager, portable hard drive with battery pack, and digital photo frame or DVD playback functionality outside of the Vista environment. It’s TongFang's first entry in the ultra-mobile market. HP currently uses a VIA chip in its nettop.

Salesforce Taps HP Refugee To Run Asia-Pac
Salesforce.com has named Steve McWhirter, an HP Software VP, president of its Asia-Pacific region, replacing Stephen Russell who’s had the job for almost three years. McWhirter has 15 years experience in the region. He’s also done stints with Red Hat and IBM Software. Asia-Pac is Salesforce’s fastest-growing territory, up 85% last year.

Cloud Watch
Microsoft is building its fourth big data center in Iowa. It’s got one in the state of Washington, another in Texas and a third in Chicago.

Lenovo To Pre-Load Mozy
Lenovo is going to pre-load a free trial of EMC’s Mozy remote online data backup widgetry on some of its laptops. It is Mozy’s first such deal with a PC maker. Eee creator Asustek told the Wall Street Journal it’s going to offer 20GB of free online storage later this year or early next to distinguish its nettop from the coming flood. It’s also thinking of free music, movies and games.

PayPal President Named to Zuora Board
PayPal president Scott Thompson has joined the board of Zuora, the SaaS subscription billing start-up.

AMD To Sell its TV Unit
Financially strapped AMD, struggling to break even, is going to sell its digital TV unit to Broadcom for $192.8 million. The deal should close by the end of the year.